Don't Drive the Babysitter Home
by SurlyCoach
Summary: From the title, it sounds a bit like a horror story, but it's not. Not at all. Unless you're Eric Taylor.


**Don't Drive the Babysitter Home**

Tami giggles on the doorstep of the house. "Sugar, I think you're going to have to drive the babysitter home."

"Damn, Tami," I mutter, "I told you not to have that third glass of wine."

Her eyes smile up at me. Flecks of green burst like firecrackers in a field of blue. It's hard to stay irritated with her when she's so damn beautiful. I can tell she's trying not to laugh. She folds her lips down into that fake pout of hers. "Aw, poor baby, you have to drive the babysitter home for a change."

"There's a reason I don't do it, Tami, and it isn't because I'm lazy." She's gives me that look. That one she's perfected in the twenty years we've been married. That one that says, _Explain yourself, Eric_. So I do. "I don't think it's a good idea for me to drive a teenage girl home alone at night."

She puts a hand on my shoulder and pats it. That means she's getting ready to say something condescending. It only took me three years of marriage to learn to read that tell. "You're pretty sexy, Coach Taylor, but I think she can manage to resist throwing herself at you."

That's not what I meant and she knows it. My jaw clinches.

Tami's got a strange way of reacting to my irritation. She laughs. "Come on, Eric," she says. "I think if you can trust a girl enough to leave her alone with our daughter, you can trust her not to make false accusation of rape!" Her voice goes up on the last words. It's practically a shout, because she's a little tipsy at the moment, and even when she's not, she still sometimes talks like that. When we're arguing, I mean, those last words go up in volume.

We're not arguing now, not really, but she must have lost her volume control somewhere in that third glass of wine. Maybe if she'd eaten more than a shrimp and spinach salad, she wouldn't have, but she's been counting her calories. It drives me crazy. She puts them in her phone and when she reaches her quota she stops eating for the day. She tries to budget. I mean, somehow she's always got room for at least one glass of wine. But I wish she wouldn't count her calories at all. I know it's harder now that we're older. We work out almost every day, but that just doesn't keep it off like it used to in our thirties. But, come on! She's one damn fine woman. And she'll still be sexy with an extra ten pounds. But at least then I won't feel so guilty scarfing down my steak or resting the remote on that nice shelf that's being built by my emerging beer belly. I told her not to bother with the counting, that I'll love her ten pounds from now, just like I'll love her ten years from now. But she says she's not doing it for me. She's doing it for her. Whatever the hell that means. She's not the one running her hands all over her body. At least not while I'm looking.

But I'm not thinking of that right now, at least not for more than a few seconds, because she is _loud_. "Shhhhh!" I insist, putting a finger right on her lips. She kisses my fingertip and then licks it and then laughs. I'd say something sexually suggestive in response if I weren't so damn irritated and if I didn't know she was mocking me.

I take my finger away. "It's just awkward is all," I explain, "but you sure as hell aren't driving her home in your condition."

"My _condition_?" she says and laughs. "Lord, Eric, I am _done_ with conditions. We took care of that." She pats me again, not on the shoulder this time. No, sir. In a _very_ different place. "Snip, snip," she says, and I take her hand away, because we're outside after all, a few feet from a public street, and the porch light's on.

**[*]**

Jenny shuts the passenger's door, smacks her gum, slides on her seatbelt, and crosses her legs at the knee. She's seventeen, but she doesn't have her own car.

As a general principle, I don't like being alone with members of the female sex, unless it's one of my daughters or Tami. Teenage girls make me especially uncomfortable, because they're in that weird in-between phase where, physically, they _look_ like adults, but they _aren't_ adults.

I don't have any problem driving teenage boys home alone. Showing up on their doorsteps at any hour just to have a talk. Bringing them to deserted football fields in the middle of the night. Playing ping pong with them at 2 AM. But girls…girls are another matter altogether, and I'm irritated at Tami for making me do this.

At least Jenny's fairly modestly dressed, unlike the twenty-year-old college student Tami hired the first time we went out together after settling in Philadelphia. Tami got her name off some bulletin board at Braemore, and the girl showed up practically bursting out of her tank top, which was even tighter than her skirt, which was pretty damn short. Gracie was already reading in bed, and as that young woman sashayed off to our daughter's room, Tami asked me, "Are you looking at her ass?" And I said, "Well I am _now_ that you've called it to my attention." Suffice it to say, Tami never hired her again, and I did not get laid that night.

But Jenny's dressed the way I want Gracie to dress when she's a teenager. Well, I'd rather Gracie be covered head to toe, to be honest, but this is America and I know I have to be a little more liberal than that.

I'm beginning to think this car ride won't be so very awkward after all. We're already on the road and she only lives about ten minutes away. The relief is just easing in when she says, "Coach Taylor, can I ask you a personal question?"

Damn. See, this is exactly why I want Tami to drive the babysitters home.

"Uh…" I answer. "Depends on the question." I've come to a stop at a stoplight. _Turn green already._ I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. _Turn. Turn. Turn._ Maybe she'll ask me who my favorite NFL team is.

"How often do you and Mrs. Taylor have sex?"

_Turn!_ The light does, and I gun it. "That's none of your business."

"I'm only asking," she continues, "because like my boyfriend?" Is that a question? Is that even a sentence? Why do so many teenage girls throw question marks smack in the middle of their sentences like that? "He hasn't wanted to do it lately, and I'm wondering if that's like normal? I'd ask my dad but I totally can't talk to him about sex, but you and Mrs. Taylor are, like, so cool, you know?"

"I'm not cool." My eyes are locked on the road straight ahead.

"And I think there must be something wrong if he doesn't want to have sex with me. Do you think there's something wrong?"

Yes. If a teenage boy is turning down a legitimate offer of sex, something is very, very wrong. Unless he's wearing one of those _true love waits_ rings that were semi-popular in the mid-90's. And even then I'd be skeptical, because I think what his ring really means is _true love waits until she says she's changed her mind and then true love is perfectly happy not to wait anymore._

I grew up in a pretty religious house myself, and I tried to wait, God knows I tried, but Tami, who grew up in an even more religious house, convinced me I didn't really have to. Not that I required very persuasive arguments. I still remember that night she crawled into my sleeping bag down by the lake and said, "I'm cold. Hold me." True love succumbs.

"I wouldn't know," I say.

"Like, I'm afraid he might be cheating on me," she prattles on. "Like maybe he's getting it somewhere else?"

I'm going twelve miles over the speed limit now.

"Like, I mean, if you were cheating on Mrs. Taylor –"

"-I would never cheat on Mrs. Taylor."

Tami was my first, my best, my last. Sometimes I wish I was that for her. Well, I hope she considers me her best. I know it couldn't have been Mo. I don't care how experienced he was, a guy that self-absorbed can't possibly know how to please a woman. And I don't think it was Jose or Kevin or Eddie either, because they were all in and out. Of her life I mean! So I'm pretty damn sure I'm the best she's ever had. Probably the best and the worst, when you come to think of it, because she's had me a lot of times in twenty-then-some years. And, provided I don't die anytime soon, I should also be her last. Even if I do die sometime soon, I think she should be in mourning until she's eighty, and then she can have a gentleman friend who brings her a root beer and a crossword on Sunday afternoons, but that's it. The only thing I can't ever be is her first. Not her first lay, and not her first love. I guess I could be her "first husband," but I'd rather not be that. Just plain "husband" is how I'd like to stay. Not that it's important to be first. Except in football. And ping pong. And chili cook-offs.

"But _if_ you _were_ cheating, like, what could Mrs. Taylor do to kind of, you know, get you back again?"

I'm going seventeen miles over the speed limit now. "Leave me until I came to my senses."

"But is there anything she could do, you know, like different? Different in the bedroom?"

I'm approaching another light, and it's about to turn red, so I put my foot down hard against the pedal and just gun it.

**[*]**

The problem with three glasses of wine is that it makes Tami want a fourth. She can stop just fine after two. It's that third one that tips the scales. That's why she's opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio by the time I get home, and she's sipping and smiling away when I slam the front door.

I toss my keys on top of the coffee table. No, I don't toss them, I chuck them. I'm still irritated she made me drive the babysitter home. She gives me her w_ell-boo-hoo-poor-Eric_ look_._ Then she laughs. "Have a nice drive, hon?" she asks.

I flop down into the arm chair next to the couch where's she sitting. I slouch down.

"Did Jenny manage to resist your smoldering manness?" she asks.

I glare at her.

"Come on, Eric! I'm sure the drive was entirely uneventful."

"Yep," I say, putting my hands on the arms of the chair and pushing myself up into a standing position. I bend down and kiss her on the cheek, because we agreed to never let the sun go down upon our wrath. I think that Bible verse was on the wedding invitations. Not really, but it could have been. We'd already had enough fights by then. "Night, babe."

I turn and take two steps from the couch, but then I turn back. "Oh, by the way, I got a ticket for reckless driving. That's more points on my license, so it's going to be suspended for a bit. You'll have to drive me to work for the next six months. And you'll have to take home all the babysitters." I wink at her. "Nite, babe. Hope that wine was worth it."

As I'm disappearing down the hallway, her voice trails after me, "I guess this means you don't want sex tonight!"

I stop with my hand on the bedroom door. I jog backward to the living room and then turn. "Well, I didn't say _that_."

"It's good to see you smile, sugar," she says. Then she raises her wine glass and half shouts, half sings, "I've got the power!"

"What?"

"The power to make you smile."

"Yeah…you sure do…" I look at her cautiously and laugh. She's got that power too. Sometimes she makes me laugh and I don't even know why I'm laughing. "So are we having sex or not?"

"We're having sex," she says, "but you might have to carry me to the bedroom."

I am more than happy to accommodate her. She's laughing when I swing her over my shoulder, and pretty soon I'm laughing too, but I'm trying to shush her at the same time, because this isn't going to happen if Gracie wakes up.

I manage to get her to the bedroom, and I get us both undressed, because she's not much help. We then proceed to have mediocre sex, which is the only kind of sex we can have when one or both of us is drunk, but she's just drunk enough that maybe she'll remember it as the best she's ever had. From my perspective, it's not half bad. I guess it's like the glass - either half empty or half full depending on whether you're an optimist or a pessimist. Tami says I'm a pessimist. I don't think so. In general, I think I'm a realist and she's an idealist. But when it comes to sex, we both know I'm an eternal optimist. Half bad's always half good and half good's pretty damn satisfying in my book.

But the thing that's most satisfying is the way she laughs when it's over, and cuddles up close, and kisses my nose, and says, "Damn I love you, Eric Taylor," and closes her eyes, and drifts off to sleep, without ever once asking how much the ticket's going to cost.

**/ AND THAT THERE'S THE END /**


End file.
